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Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York Thomson Reuters The Crypto Company, a cryptocurrency firm building out the capital markets for bitcoin, is splitting its stock after an eye-popping month. Read Full Story

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York Thomson Reuters The Crypto Company, a cryptocurrency firm building out the capital markets for bitcoin, is splitting its stock after an eye-popping month. Read Full Story

Peer-to-peer bitcoin trading in major developing nations outpaced the U.S., the world's biggest market, according to data from LocalBitcoins. Demand surged in China and Russia, where central banks put a stop to local exchange trading; in Venezuela, where authorities cracked down on bitcoin mining …

Blockchain is upending the world’s financial markets with the rise of bitcoin, and now the digital-ledger system is poised to do the same next year for raw materials like food and energy. “We’re talking about this massive change in the way that … Read Full Story

Blockchain is upending the world’s financial markets with the rise of bitcoin, and now the digital-ledger system is poised to do the same next year for raw materials like food and energy. “We’re talking about this massive change in the way that … Read Full Story

KARACHI: Shariah-complaint banks have been urged to adopt a strategy to make effective use of financial technology, which is triggering big changes to global financial markets, a statement said on Wednesday. “At present, the Islamic finance industry has a share of 13.5 percent in the country with …

In the search for fundamentals some have suggested we should look at the supply of Bitcoins in the market (which is regulated by the technology itself), the number of Bitcoin transactions through the market, or even the energy consumed by Bitcoin miners (the computers that validate transactions and …

The Greek supreme court in Athens has rejected today the appeal by the suspected BTC-e operator Alexander Vinnik regarding his extradition to the United States. The way is now clear for the Greek justice minister to give the final verdict whether to extradite the Russian national to American authorities or not. Also Read: Tax Investigators Raid […]

The Greek supreme court in Athens has rejected today the appeal by the suspected BTC-e operator Alexander Vinnik regarding his extradition to the United States. The way is now clear for the Greek justice minister to give the final verdict whether to extradite the Russian national to American authorities or not.

The Extradition of Vinnik

Greece’s top court has ruled that Alexander Vinnik can be handed to criminal authorities in the U.S. where he is accused of running a $4 billion money laundering operation. The Americans claim that Vinnik was the head operator of the bitcoin exchange BTC-e, a charge both he and the exchange deny.

In addition to money laundering, Vinnik faces in the US accusations of masterminding multiple crimes since 2011, including drug trafficking and computer hacking. He is also accused of laundering a large amount of bitcoin Vinnik allegedly “obtained” from the hack of Mt. Gox. If convicted he can get up to 55 years in an American prison.

Russia Wants Vinnik Back

Russia had previously objected to Vinnik’s extradition to the U.S. on the grounds that it violates international law. His motherland also demands he be sent back, supposedly to face charges there for stealing 600,000 rubles (about $10,500). Vinnik and his lawyers also agreed to have him return to Russia.

“The Supreme Court’s decision was expected, it is a decision on an appeal on the same decision of the Thessaloniki court. There are more opportunities for legal work which will be carried out now,” Vinnik’s lawyer, Timofey Musatov, told Russian news agency Sputnik today.

Musatov earlier warned that this sets a precedent where “any citizen in the world could be arrested at any second on false accusations, in which there are no facts, but only assumptions.”

Should Alexander Vinnik expect a fair trial in the US? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

One in three millennials will be invested in a cryptocurrency by the end of next year, possibly enticed by the meteoric rise in the value of bitcoin over recent months, according to new research. The study by cryptocurrency exchange London Block Exchange reveals that five per cent of those aged below …

Shawbrook Bank, a specialist UK savings and lending Bank, has deployed a central platform for the ma…

Shawbrook Bank, a specialist UK savings and lending Bank, has deployed a central platform for the management of business-critical spreadsheets, from ClusterSeven, the leading global supplier of strategic spreadsheet and end-user computing (EUC) management software.

A hosted solution, the Bank’s adoption of ClusterSeven is a key element of Shawbrook Bank’s strategy to build and strengthen its model risk management capabilities.

Shawbrook Bank was founded in 2011 to serve the needs of SMES and individuals in the UK. At 31 December 2016, the Bank’s total lending reached more than £4.1 billion and has raised over £3.9 billion in deposits since its launch.

With spreadsheets extensively used by Shawbrook to develop business-critical processes and applications, ClusterSeven is providing the Operational Risk team with central, automated oversight of all the Bank’s major spreadsheets and EUC models. The solution non-intrusively manages all Shawbrook’s business-critical spreadsheets, providing automated audit trails that highlight when and what changes have been made by individuals in the Bank’s high-risk applications. The level of detail provided to spreadsheet owners, reviewers and senior managers is exceptional – it is right down to a specific cell or formula in the file.

Head of Operational Risk at Shawbrook Bank Limited, Donna Bradley, explained the importance of such capability for risk management, “Many of our business-critical models are user-developed applications in Excel, which fall outside of the scope of IT and other enterprise systems. Excel offers tremendous benefits for collating, reconciling, manipulating and summarising key data, but due to a lack of controls (like in Word), there is a risk of critical structural changes to macros and links going undetected and passed into production.

“Manually monitoring changes in these complex models is impossible, and spreadsheet errors can potentially be extremely costly to our organisation, both financially and reputation wise,” Bradley elaborated. “With the pressure of regulation and demands for auditable model governance, automating spreadsheet management is the only conceivable way that we can comply and mitigate spreadsheet risk.”

The burden of model validation on the Operational Risk team has reduced. Due to the availability of the history of changes to models in ClusterSeven, the team is undertaking less frequent validation of the models to demonstrate compliance to regulators.

ClusterSeven has enabled strict enforcement of spreadsheet and EUC build policy among users. Every time a new spreadsheet is built, it is risk checked against a default set of rules configured in the solution to ensure that no rules have been broken. This capability is ensuring consistency, accuracy and integrity of all spreadsheet-based models in the Bank.

“Shawbrook Bank is realistic about the fact that user-built spreadsheet applications will always be a key tool in business operation,” Henry Umney, CEO of ClusterSeven commented. “Rather than trying to limit its use in favor of other enterprise systems – an exercise that often fails – the Bank has taken a strategic approach to its management for the benefit of users who need the flexible functionality of Excel to perform their day-to-day activities. In doing so, the organization is delivering against the needs of its users without putting the Bank at operational, regulatory, financial or reputational risk. In fact, most of the regulations (e.g. SOX, MIFID II, BCBS 239, Solvency II) today are demanding that financial institutions adopt demonstrable spreadsheet management in recognition of how widely Excel is used in business.”

The Reserve Bank of Australia has no plans to issue electronic dollar banknotes, says governor Phili…

The Reserve Bank of Australia has no plans to issue electronic dollar banknotes, says governor Philip Lowe in a speech in which he also dismisses the current fascination with bitcoin as a „speculative mania“.

The concept of central bank digital currencies has been gathering momentum recently, with authorities in Canada, the US and UK all investigating the potential benefits and pitfalls.

While the use of cash is falling quickly in Australia, Lowe says that the case for adding an electronic form of banknotes to the payments mix „has not been established, even if it were technologically feasible“.

And, he told an audience at a payments conference, Australia is not alone, with few of his peers around the world seeing e-banknotes on the horizon.

In Australia, the case is undermined by the imminent New Payments Platform, which will soon bring the kind of 24/7 instant payments already enjoyed in countries such as the UK.

Lowe also made clear that he does not see a case for the RBA offering every Australian a bank account for the purposes of making payments, arguing that it would change the entire banking system „in a way that would not promote the public interest“.

As for issuing dollars on the blockchain for use with limited private systems, a convincing case has yet to be made, although it could be in the future if it could prove to offer more efficient, lower-cost business processes and payments.

Lowe also used his speech to hit out at the current bitcoin mania, saying that with its volatile nature and high transaction costs, it seems suited mainly to the illegal economy.

„So the current fascination with these currencies feels more like a speculative mania than it has to do with their use as an efficient and convenient form of electronic payment.“

According to a statement obtained by Reuters, the South Korean government plans on banning minors (young people, not those who mine) from opening accounts with cryptocurrency exchanges. The country is also examining the possibility of taxing capital gains from virtual currency trading.